Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  ‘You’ve been the tool of some terrible plotters, Cynlais. And is that leap to show that you are now shaking the sand out of your sash?’

  ‘Oh no. I’m not worried about the sand at all, Mr Smayle. This leap in the air is just to show that I am the leader of these Dervishes, the Mad Mahdi. I got a lot of information about him from that very wise voter who never shifts from the Reading Room downstairs, Jedediah Knight the Light.’

  ‘I’m here,’ said a voice from the back. It was Jedediah Knight, resting his eyes in the shadows of the back row and looking, as he always did, shocked by understanding and wearied by the search for things that merit the tribute of being understood. ‘But I told him that the Mahdi would never have advanced against the Empire playing so daring a tune and with so little on.’

  ‘What do you say to these charges, Cynlais?’ asked Gomer.

  ‘Fair enough, Gomer,’ said Cynlais. ‘When we get enough money for new costumes we’ll come in out of the Middle East at a fast trot.’

  ‘Any more, Mr Smayle?’ asked Gomer.

  ‘A lot more. I have a pint of gall on my mind about that woman’s band organised by Georgie Young but that will have to wait.’

  He made for the door with long, urgent strides and the two ushers fell back.

  ‘Goodnight,’ we all shouted, but the sound that came back from Uriah was just a blur.

  ‘Come on, Edwin,’ said Milton Nicholas. ‘Let’s go and have some tea and beef extract at Tasso’s.’

  Later that night, at Paolo Tasso’s Coffee Tavern, my Uncle Edwin was a lot less serene than usual. Over a glass of scalding burdock, which he drank because someone had told him it made a man callous and jocose, he admitted that he’d been thinking a lot about what Uriah Smayle had said. He made it clear to us that he was in no way siding with Uriah. The pageantry of life had long passed us by in Meadow Prospect and he was glad of the colour and variety brought into our streets by the costumes worn by some of the boys. It would help us, he said, to recover from the sharp clip behind the ear dealt us by the Industrial Revolution. But all the same, he claimed, he could see dangers in this eruption of Mediterranean flippancy and joy.

  ‘We have worn ourselves over the years bald and bandy try ing to bring a little thought and uplift to this section of the fringe. Not even a Japanese shirt shrinks more swiftly than awareness. It’s been cold, lonely work trying to push the ape back into the closet. Now with all these drum beats and marching songs the place could well become a mental boneyard overnight.’

  There was such a plangent tolling in his voice that the steam ceased to rise from his burdock and Tasso offered to warm it for him again, but Uncle Edwin said that at that moment a stoup of cold cordial was just the thing for him.

  But few of us agreed with Uncle Edwin. For all the young a tide of delight flowed in with the carnivals. At first we had two bands in Meadow Prospect; Cynlais Coleman’s Dervishes and the Boys from Dixie. The Boys from Dixie wore black suits and we never got to know where voters with so little surplus to buy bottles ever got the cork from to make themselves look so dark. They were good marchers, though, and it was impressive to see these one hundred and twenty jet-black pillars moving down the street in perfect formation playing ‘Swanee’ in three lines of harmony.

  There were some who said it was typical of a gloomy place like Meadow Prospect that it should have one band walking about in no tint save sable and looking like an instalment of eternal night, while another, Cynlais Coleman’s, left you wondering whether to give it a good clap or a strong strait-jacket. But we took some pride from the fact that at marching the Boys from Dixie could not be beaten. Their driller and coach was a cantankerous and aged imperialist called Georgie Young the Further Flung, a solitary and chronic dissenter from Meadow Prospect’s general radicalism. Georgie had fought in several of our African wars and Uncle Edwin said it gave Georgie some part of his youth back to have this phalanx of darkened elements wheeling and turning every whipstitch at his shout of command.

  Most of the bands went in for vivid colours, though a century of chapel-bound caution had left far too little coloured fabric to go around. If any voter had any showy stuff at home he was well advised to sit tight on the box, or the envoy of some band would soon be trundling off with every stitch of it to succour some colleagues who had been losing points for his band by turning out a few inches short in the leg or deficient in one sleeve. We urged Georgie Young that the Boys from Dixie should brighten themselves up a little, with a yellow sash or even a scarlet fez, a tight-fitting and easily made article which gave a very dashing look to the Tredomen Janissaries, a Turkish body. But Georgie was obdurate. His phobias were down in a lush meadow and grazing hard. It was black from tip to toe or nothing, he said. However, he relented somewhat when he formed the first women’s band. These were a broad-bodied, vigorous crew, strong on charabanc outings that finished on a note of blazing revelry with these elements drink ing direct from the petrol tank. Their band had uniforms made roughly of the colour and pattern of the national flag. The tune they played on their gazookas was ‘Rule, Britannia’. They began well every time they turned out, but they were invari ably driven off-key by their shyer members who could not keep their minds on the score of ‘Rule, Britannia’ while their Union Jacks kept slipping south with the convulsive movements of quick marching on sudden slopes. They had even called in Mathew Sewell the Sotto as musical adviser and Mathew had given them a grounding in self-confidence and sol-fa. But they went as out of tune as ever. Jedediah Knight the Light, fresh from a short brush with Einstein, said that if they got any worse they would surely reach the bend in musical space which would bring them willy-nilly back to the key first given them by Sewell the Sotto on his little tuning fork. Nevertheless, both of Georgie’s bands, the dour Boys from Dixie and the erratic Britannias, had a smartness that completely eclipsed Cynlais Coleman’s bedraggled covey in their flapping fragments of sheet.

  So it was decided by the group that met at Tasso’s that the time had come to arrange a new deal for the Dervishes. It was agreed that they were altogether too inscrutable for an area so in need of new and clear images.

  It was left to Mathew Sewell, who knew more about the bands than anybody else and had operated as a judge in half a dozen smaller carnivals, to put the matter to Cynlais.

  Cynlais came along to Tasso’s one Thursday night for a talk with his critics. It was still July but Tasso had his big stove on full in the middle of the shop because he had a group of older clients who had never been properly warm since the flood of 1911. Tea all round was ordered and Mathew Sewell stood in the middle of the room, with his hand up, ready to start, but he had to wait a few minutes for the hissing of the tea urn and the rattling of teacups to abate. As a specialist in the head voice, he hated to speak in a shout.

  After a sip of tea Sewell summarised for the benefit of those who were new to this issue of Cynlais’ band the findings of Smayle and the other censors. Then he addressed Cynlais directly:

  ‘So you see, Cynlais, there are no two twos about it. You’ve got to put a stop to this business of going about half nude. It’s out of place in such a division as this. I speak as an artist and without malice. But it’s about time you and the boys dressed in something a bit more tasteful. Something soft and sensuous, that’s what we want.’

  Cynlais drank his tea while Uncle Edwin stroked the back of his head, encouraging him to be lucid. Then Cynlais put up his hand to show Edwin that the message had worked and he said:

  ‘I say to you, Mathew, what I said to Uriah Smayle and Ogley Floyd the Flame and those other very fierce elements. Get us the costumes and we’ll all be as soft and sensuous as you like. Like cream.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Mathew. ‘Think it over now, and when you’re fitted out consult me about the music and I’ll pre scribe some tune with a lullaby flavour that you can march to.’ Mathew threw such hints of the soporific into the word ‘lullaby’ that some of the people in Tasso’s looked disturbed,
as if afraid that if Sewell were given a free wand Cynlais’ band would be the first in the area to wind up asleep on the kerb halfway through the carnival. Mathew saw their expression and, always averse to argument, said: ‘I’ve got to go now. Bono notte, Signor Tasso.’

  ‘So long, Mathew,’ we all said, feeling a certain shabbiness on our tongues. Cynlais was staring at the door that had just shut behind Mathew.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ asked Cynlais. ‘Oh he’s so smooth and operatic, that Sewell the Sotto. A treat.’ He turned to Tasso, who was leaning over the counter in his long white shop coat, his toffee hammer sticking out of the breast pocket, his face grey, joyless but unwaveringly sympathetic. ‘Don’t you like to have Sewell come out with these little bits of Italian, Tasso?’

  ‘It is true, Cynlais,’ said Tasso. ‘More than once Signor Sewell the Sotto has eased the burden of my old longing for Lugano.’

  Gomer Gough the Gavel got order once again by tapping with his cup on the cast-iron fireguard.

  ‘Now let’s get down to this,’ said Gomer. ‘We’ve got to fit Cynlais up with a band that will make a contribution to beauty and keep Uriah Smayle out of the County Clinic. We can’t leave the field undisputed to Georgie Young and his Boer War fancies.’ There was a silence for a minute. Hard thought scoured the inside of every head bent towards the stove as history was raked for character and costume suitable for Cynlais and his followers. Tasso tapped on the counter with his toffee hammer to keep the meditation in rhythm. Then Gomer looked relieved as if he had just stepped in from a high wind. We all smiled to welcome his revelation but we stopped smiling when he said:

  ‘Have you got any money, Cynlais?’

  ‘Money? Money?’ said Cynlais and our eyebrows backed him up because we thought Gomer Gough’s question pointless at that point in our epoch.

  ‘Forget that I asked,’ said Gomer. ‘But I think it’s a shame that a boy like you who made so much at the coal face and at professional running should now be whittled down to a loin cloth for the summer and a double-breasted waistcoat for the winter.’ Gomer’s eyes wandered around the room until they landed on Milton Nicholas. ‘Come here, Milton. You’ve been looking very nimble-witted since you were voted on to the Library committee. How do you think Cynlais Coleman could get hold of some money to deck out his band in something special? I mean some way that won’t have Cynlais playing his last tune through the bars of the County Keep.’

  ‘Well, he’s still known as Coleman the Comet for his speed off the mark. Wasn’t it Paavo Nurmi, the great Finn, who once said that it wouldn’t surprise him if Cynlais Coleman turned out to be the only athlete ever to be operated on for rockets in the rear?’ We all nodded yes but felt that Milton had probably never heard of this Nurmi until that morning and was only slipping in the name to make a striking effect. Gomer urged Milton to forget the Finn and get back to the present. ‘Let him find somebody who wants to hire a fast runner,’ added Milton.

  ‘In this area at the moment, Milton, even an antelope would have to make Welsh cakes and mint toffee on the side to make both ends meet. Be practical, boy.’

  ‘I’m being practical. I heard today that a group of sporting elements in Trecelyn with a definite bias against serious thought are going to stage a professional sprint with big cash prizes. Comes off in three weeks.’

  ‘Don’t forget that Cynlais is getting on a bit,’ said Teilo Dew, ‘for this high-class running anyway. I’ve heard him wheeze a bit on the sharper slopes.’

  ‘Trust Teilo Dew the Doom to chip in with an item like that,’ said Milton bitterly. ‘Whenever Teilo talks to you he’s peering at you from between his two old friends, Change and Decay. In three weeks Cynlais could be at his best and if you boys could take up a few collections to lay bets on him we’d have a treasury.

  ‘That’s a very backward habit, gambling,’ said Uncle Edwin.

  ‘Remind me to hire a small grave for the scruples of Edwin Pugh the Pang,’ said Gomer. ‘Right. That’s how we’ll raise the cash. Off to bed with you now, Cynlais. You’ve got to be as fit as a fiddle for the supreme test. No more staying up till twelve and drinking hot cordial in Tasso’s.’

  Cynlais had heard very little of all this. He had been staring into the fire and pondering on what Mathew Sewell had said. He was shocked when he suddenly found supporters coming from all over the shop and helping him to his feet and leading him with half a dozen lines of advice at the same time.

  ‘Don’t sleep crouched, Coleman; it obstructs the pipes.’

  ‘Keep even your dreams chaste, Cynlais; if the libido played hell with Samson, what mightn’t it do to you?’

  ‘An hour’s sleep before midnight is worth two after.’

  ‘Slip Coleman some of those brown lozenges, Tasso, the ones that deepen the breathing.’

  ‘A foot race is a kind of battle, Cynlais. Make a plan for every foot.’

  Then Teilo Dew the Doom waved them all to silence and started to tell Cynlais about some very noted foot runner in the zone who had raced and died about two hundred years ago after outpacing all the fleeter animals and breaking every record. Everybody was glad to hear Teilo Dew opening out on what for him was a comparatively blithe topic but expressions went back to normal when Teilo reached the climax of his tale. At the end of this man’s last race his young bride had clapped him on the back and the runner had dropped down dead.

  ‘I know that you are not married, Cynlais,’ said Teilo, ‘and that you have few relatives who would want to watch you run or do anything else, but there are several voters in Meadow Prospect who would find real relish in hanging around the finishing tape and giving you a congratulatory whack just in the hope of sending you lifeless to the ground.’

  Cynlais shook himself free from his supporters and was going to ask the meaning of all this fuss but Tasso just raised his toffee hammer solemnly, which is what he always did when he wished to say that he, too, was foxed.

  We all joined in the task of helping Cynlais regain his old tremendous speed. We got him training every night up on the waun, the broad, bleak, wind filled moorland above the town. Sometimes Cynlais was like a stag, and our only trouble was to keep up with him and give him tips and instructions and fit his neck back when he went flying over molehills. At first he was a bit stiff around the edges owing to a touch of rheumatism from standing in too many High Street breezes in the role of dervish. Milton Nicholas got some wheel-grease from the gasworks, where he was a leading fitter, and Uncle Edwin, whose sym pathy of soul made his fingers just the thing for slow massage, rubbed this stuff into Cynlais until both he and Cynlais got so supple they had to be held upright for minutes on end.

  We looked after Cynlais’ nourishment, too, for his diet had been scraggy over the last few months. Teilo Dew approached that very sullen farmer Nathan Wilkins up on the top of the hill we called Merlin’s Brow, and asked him for some goat milk. Wilkins took pleasure in saying no loudly for as long as Dew was within earshot, and even the goat was seen to shake its head from side to side. So Teilo bypassed Nathan Wilkins and approached the goat direct, and in no time we had Cynlais growing stronger daily. But there was still something jerky and unpredictable in some of his movements. So Gomer Gough and Uncle Edwin decided to consult their friend Willie Silcox. He was called Silcox the Psyche because he was the greatest tracker in our valley of those nameless beasts that roam our inward jungles. If Silcox saw anyone with a look of even slight perplexity on his face he would be out with the guidebook and fanning them with Freud before they could start running. He had analysed so many people into a state of dangerous confu sion that the town’s joint diaconate had advised him to go back to simple religious mania as being a lot safer and easier on the eyes because you could work up to full heat without reading a word. Silcox had just told the joint diaconate that he was watching them closely and making notes.

  A week before the race at Trecelyn we met Willie Silcox at Tasso’s. Silcox was leaning over the counter and we all saw as we came in that he
had never looked or felt more penetrating. Tasso, who was all for indirection and compromise as the right climate for the catering trade, had shifted away from Silcox and was standing very close to the urn. People claiming to be forthrightly wise frightened the wits out of Tasso. At the sight of us Silcox waved us to stillness while he finished off a quick note he was giving Tasso on what he thought the joint effects of exile and the cash nexus would be on a middle-aged Italian. Tasso said nothing but put his head right against the urn for greater comfort.

  ‘Have a beef extract with us, Willie,’ said Gomer. ‘Glad you were able to come, boy.’

  ‘Thank you, Gomer. What mental stoppage have you got for me to disperse now?’

  ‘Oh I’m all right. My pipes were never more open. It’s Cynlais Coleman I’m worried about.’

  ‘Look, Gomer. Before we go any further, let me make this clear. To prescribe a pill for the mentally ill the patient must have a mind. That’s in the rule book and that’s the first smoke signal I would like you to send out to Coleman. That element, mentally, is still unborn. What makings of a mind he might still have had he not dropped into the bin years ago by trying to outrun the wind, and setting up as a great lover in an area that favours a slow humility in affairs of the heart.’

  ‘Don’t quibble, Willie. Cynlais isn’t running as well as he should and we want the cure.’

  ‘All right. Take me to where I can see him and if I can find a pole long enough to reach the end of Coleman’s furthest cranny I’ll give you a report and charge you for the pole because I’ll never get it back after a journey like that.’

  The next night we went with Willie Silcox up to the waun. Cynlais and a group of supporters were already there and Cyn lais was finishing a trial sprint. We could hear as we approached shouts like: ‘Come on, Cynlais.’ ‘Let’s have you Cole man.’ ‘Don’t look around, boy.’ ‘Show us your real paces, Comet.’

  Then we heard Cynlais run headlong into the group around the tape, sending several of them spinning, and we could see that he himself was lurching and gasping painfully. ‘Well done,’ said Uncle Edwin without conviction.